ASA Speed Truck Challenge Series is 1^st Gear to Pro Career

By Richard Gray, ProAutoSports Staff Writer

Match raw talent and nerve against a fat wallet and desire and … you know which combination most often wins on a racetrack.

The world is full of talented racers with paper-thin wallets who don’t get the rides, and racing teams that require funded drivers often don’t get the most able racers.

It’s this money-talent Catch 22 of racing that the ASA Speed Truck Series in partnership with ASA ProAutoSports Challenge Division is built to whip. For an aspiring driver, this series means just one thing, says Jay Rutherford, Director of the Speed Truck Series.

“It allows a driver to control his destiny,” Rutherford said. “You can’t get beat on the track by money.”

And the talent in this series that rises to the top joins some pretty hefty company. Mark Martin, Rusty Wallace and Jimmy Johnson all got their starts in the ASA’s spec series, and more recently Kurt and Kyle Busch and Casey Mears. No wonder the ASA’s motto is “We Build Champions.”

The only advantage a driver and his team has in this spec series is the degree of talent, daring and smarts they can muster against the competition campaigning purpose-built mid-size, V8-powered trucks.

All competitors in this series run the same chassis, engine, transmission, quick-change differential and the rest is free for the crew chief to tweak and find the maximum speed and handling capability and for the driver to capitalize on what he has underneath him – or her.

It’s racing grad school on pavement.

“The rest is left up to the driver’s ability. You can never get out muscled by check book racing,” Rutherford said.

The series gives aspiring racers plenty of exposure. The 14-race calendar spanning Arizona, California and Nevada is televised by the Outdoor Channel, and that’s exposure that doesn’t come along every often.

There are 60 teams in this series, and each race draws more than 30 competitors on average. The circuit is runs mostly on short track ovals. But this year the ASA Speed Truck series, in returning to its roots, adds right turns. The series makes its inaugural road racing appearance and is the premier race in the 2005 St. Johns Grand Prix, title sponsored by NAPA and the their Arizona dealers and the Salt River Project’s Coronado Generating Station.

Larry Pond, Managing Director of the St. Johns Grand Prix states, “The addition of the ASA Speed Truck Series to the event has brought television coverage by the Outdoor Channel and will make the racing even more exciting to the spectators. These drivers are not afraid of the contact and hard racing pioneered by the NASCAR Craftsman Truck  Series. There will be a lot of action on track!”

And the competitors couldn’t be happier. Most of them come from road racing backgrounds in karts, shifter karts, Legends cars, late models and dwarf cars.

“They’re all road racing experts,” Rutherford said. “They’re really looking forward to getting back to road course racing. It’s going to be an awesome experience.”

The series has run on road courses before and Rutherford says from a business perspective road racing is important in career development, as evidenced by NASCAR’s road racing events and the fact that the France family is the mover and shaker behind the Rolex Grand American Road Racing series.

“There are a lot of  race drivers coming up through the road racing courses,” Rutherford said. “A balance of road racing and paved oval track racing will develop our drivers for their future with ASA or NASCAR.”

Pond further stated, “ We have 10 Arizona drivers in the series with most of the rest coming from California, Nevada, and the other southwestern states. With the television coverage, we expect 5M households across the country to watch this race along with 10,000 spectators at the track. With the addition of our stock cars, Radical Sports Racers, sports cars and open wheel cars, this is a racing event that everyone in the White Mountain communities should see. The tickets are $5 per day for adults and children under 18 are free.” For more information, call the St. Johns Chamber of Commerce at 928-337-2000 or check out the website www.proautosports.com and click on the St. Johns Grand Prix link.